April 11, 2024

DHS

Washington Examiner: DHS recommended State Department contact 2020 election ‘censorship’ group: Emails

By Gabe Kaminsky

.....The State Department was “recommended” by the Department of Homeland Security to contact a group it later partnered with on pressuring social media platforms to suppress speech from conservatives before the 2020 election, emails show.

On Oct. 14, 2020, hours after the New York Post published a story based on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that Twitter blocked from being shared online, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center reached out to “misinformation” researchers behind the Election Integrity Partnership, a collaboration between universities, left-wing think tanks, social media companies, and the U.S. government to thwart alleged falsehoods online in the lead-up to the presidential election. That outreach from the GEC, a foreign-focused office Republican lawmakers are investigating for its ties to anti-speech projects in the United States, was apparently thanks to guidance from the DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to internal documents.

Congress

Washington Post (Technology 202): Privacy talks are heating up in Congress. Here’s what to watch for.

By Cristiano Lima-Strong

.....Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) struck a deal on a comprehensive privacy bill, and House lawmakers unveiled a companion to the Kids Online Safety Act, raising the prospects that both could still move this Congress. 

The House is scheduled to debate those and other tech measures at a hearing next week, and the Senate could soon follow suit. But just like in years past, the same pesky friction points that have bogged down talks for years may surface again…

 Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, suggested after Cantwell and McMorris Rodgers released their discussion draft that he may not be happy with their compromise on that. If other Republicans agree, it could threaten the deal.

“I cannot support any data privacy bill that empowers trial lawyers, strengthens Big Tech by imposing crushing new regulatory costs on upstart competitors or gives unprecedented power to the FTC to become referees of internet speech and DEI compliance,” he said in a statement. 

The Courts

Fox News: Disney files motion to dismiss lawsuit from 'Star Wars' actress Gina Carano, citing First Amendment

By Nikolas Lanum 

.....The Walt Disney Company has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of Gina Carano, a conservative actress who has alleged she was wrongfully terminated from the Disney+ "Star Wars" show "The Mandalorian." ...

The complaint alleges that Carano was subject to harassment over her political views, which she publicly shared on social media, such as X.

Attorneys from Schaerr Jaffe, LLP, alleged this conduct violated California laws, particularly one that stated, "No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity."

Carano’s lawyers claim that Disney’s treatment of her stands in stark contrast to other male co-stars who engaged in controversial speech online, demonstrating "discriminatory treatment."

Free Expression

First Amendment News: Fueling the FIRE: Responses to Richard Hasen on how the government should identify professional journalists for access and protection — First Amendment News 419

By Ronald K.L. Collins

.....Last week, I posted excerpts from Professor Richard Hasen’s essay on how the government might best identify professional journalists for access to government events, as well as the related protections afforded to journalists. In Part IV of that essay, as I highlighted in those excerpts, Hasen took issue with certain arguments tendered by FIRE in its amicus brief, which was filed in the Ninth Circuit in TGP Communications v. Jack Sellers (FIRE’s Ronnie London, counsel of record).

In the spirit of fairness and the free exchange of ideas, I invited the FIRE folks to reply, which they accepted. And to add a bit more conceptual fuel to the “FIRE,” Stephen Rohde also entered the fray with his own reply to Hasen.

Both are featured below.

The “fiery” exchange will continue next week, when professor Hasen will return with a rejoinder to his critics.

Jonathan Turley: Berkeley Students Disrupt Dinner at Law Dean’s Home; Accuse Law Professor of Assault

.....UC Berkeley’s law school dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, and his wife, law professor Catherine Fisk, faced a bizarre scene this week when third-year students invited into their home for a dinner held a disruptive protest and refused to leave. The students accused Fisk of assault after she tried to pull a microphone from the hands of Malak Afaneh, leader of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine…

The suggestion is that you have a First Amendment right to enter a private residence, stage a loud protest, refuse to leave, and prevent others from associating...

The problem is that these students have been told for years that deplatforming and disrupting events are forms of free speech. This has been an issue of contention with some academics who believe that free speech includes the right to silence others. 

Online Speech Platforms

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and Common Carriers: Response to Adam Candeub

By Ilya Somin

.....In a recent guest post at this site, Prof. Adam Candeub has put up a thoughtful critique of my argument that government cannot use "common carrier" status to severely restrict the rights of social media firms to engage in content moderation on their sites. While I appreciate Candeub's effort, I remain unrepentant. Indeed, one valuable aspect of his argument is that it highlights the dangerous implications of the common carrier theory currently being advanced by Texas and Florida in their attempts to defend their social media laws before the Supreme Court.

Candeub argues that state governments can impose common carrier status on social media firms on the basis that they have "market power" or simply because they must be compelled to "stay in their lane." Either theory would have drastic implications for freedom of speech.

The States

Daytona News-Journal: 'First Amendment auditors' test DeLand law enforcement

By Colleen Jones

.....In an attempt to thwart more potentially threatening situations, DeLand city officials have enacted a policy to prohibit videotaping of interactions between private citizens and public officers in the lobby of the DeLand Police Department.

The DeLand City Commission voted unanimously at last week's meeting in favor of a resolution to prevent audio and video recordings of individuals requesting records or reporting crimes to police. City spokesman Chris Graham said this type of surveillance has increased in recent months and that city staff had become concerned that the privacy of citizens could be compromised by so-called "First Amendment auditors" whose primary goal is to test constitutional rights, specifically the right to photograph and video record in public spaces ― a right protected by the First Amendment.